Doctor MJ wrote:So just a couple thoughts pertaining to Pettit & Stockton:
1. I'm not nominating Pettit yet, but he's near that time for me. A thing he demonstrates that I look for when evaluating guys in rapidly changing times is an ability to get more effective statistically at a time when you'd think he should be getting less so. Pettit's efficiency goes up over the course of his career and thus allows him to maintain his TS Add, which given the fact that I think competition was rising rapidly in this time, makes me conclude that that there was nothing fundamental talent-wise holding him back. I think Pettit could be an all-star today.
I think a comparison with Karl Malone & Charles Barkley is telling because I think both Karl & Chuck are more physically talented than Pettit and would tend to give them the advantage over Pettit...but with regards to Barkley I have concerns about defensive effort and temperamental attitude. I give him the peak advantage over Pettit, but really not sure about career.
2. Stating up front that I'm talking about what was instead of what might have been, one of the things that holds Stockton back is that I just rarely see him as a serious candidate for the Top 5 in any given year. I'll absolutely acknowledge here that a key part of what's going on is that I'm giving Malone a Top 5 spot, and while I don't insist on not giving two guys from the team Top 5 slots, it doesn't happen that often.
I bring this up in part because of the conversation about accolades. Basically, Stockton's a guy who year-to-year just isn't in that top tier of accolade-getters the way most others in this rare air are, and so to the extent that we feel we can use this as a proxy for how impressive his years were, it naturally tends to hurt him. I think that part there is a place for debate so I'll acknowledge that before going to another point.
There are all sorts of all-in-one stats that absolutely love Stockton, and such stats are inherently more nuanced than rankings, so one can argue that the actual rank should be essentially thrown out because of how good Stockton's stats look.
I don't have Stockton super-low or anything, but I think where I tend to struggle is when I recognize 2 things:
1. The Jazz are as big of a deal as they are because of their peak in the mid-to-late '90s when the team became less about "Stockton and Malone" and more about "Malone and satellites". It's one thing for Stockton not quite be up there with his teammate, and quite another when we recognize that the team literally seems to peak as they relegate him to a smaller role.
2. There were times where we would have hoped that a 2nd star would take advantage of the pressure places on the 1st and put up big numbers - a la Big Game James Worthy. And the reality is that that's not how it was with Stockton for the vast majority of his career, and especially not so by the time the Jazz peaked. The fact that Stockton was an efficient scorer becomes less sexy when I see that he was so much likely than other players we tend to discuss at these ranks to decide "Okay, time for me to take over."
Stockton supporters will rightly point out that there were signs he could do something more along these lines early in his time as a starter, and thus arguably might've been able to do that in the Jazz years of contention. But even if that was simply a bad choice by Jerry Sloan, it's what was, and "what was" is what I'm personally trying to focus on with my criteria at this time.
It's possible that Stockton could have done what Nash did, but he didn't do it, and so Nash has an edge in my evaluation over him.
And I'll say that I think it's not just possible that Nash could have been playing at his MVP level years earlier, but I think he absolutely could have done so - I don't think he came into the league "raw" - and if he had done so he'd rank considerably higher on my list - higher than Kobe, for example - but that's not what happened, so that's not where I have him.
I don't think numbers can account for how much better Stockton was then Nash on defense. He didn't even gamble much and still averaged nearly 3 steals per game over his prime due to his incredibly quick hands and fast reactions. Meanwhile, Nash was a serious liability on D for most of his career and at times one of the worst defenders in the entire league. However, using some of those box score numbers, I think it's very interesting to compare Stockton and Nash's top 15 seasons by BPM:
Stock: 9.0, 8.9, 8.7, 8.5, 8.3, 8.3, 8.0, 6.8, 6.7, 6.6, 6.6, 6.6, 6.1, 5.6, 5.3
Nash: 5.9, 5.0, 4.7, 4.6, 4.3, 3.9, 3.4, 3.2, 3.1, 2.8, 2.5, 2.4, 1.4, 0.4, -0.9
That's a MASSIVE MASSIVE box score gap. I know Nash was better at making aggressive passes, but again remember, these numbers won't be able to understand the entirety of the defensive gap either. If you're wondering if the playoffs look any better for Nash they don't:
Stock: 12.0, 8.8, 8.7, 8.6, 8.4, 7.8, 6.7, 6.6, 6.4, 6.1
Nash: 5.2, 4.7, 4.6, 3.7, 2.4, 2.3, 2.2, 2.1, 1.7, 0.0
I think there's a tendency with Nash to be like "we can ignore his somewhat pedestrian box score numbers because his impact numbers are so much better", but with Stockton who also outperforms his box score numbers like crazy with impact numbers AND has elite box score numbers to begin with, he's completely marginalized. I think if we actually had play-by-play data for more of Stockton's peak years, people would be a lot less likely to question whether his peak held up to Nash and we'd be comparing him to people higher on the list instead.
